Classic Poem

There are no towers like Melrose
About the land of Ayr,
But all the morning gates unclose
To who goes pilgrim there;
No Abbotsford demands largess ,
Nor money-warders prance,
To show the poet of success
And banker in romance.

But as the little towns of Burns
Their names familiar say,
The stranger to the native turns
And smiles between them play;
A social glee like Bobby's rhymes
In eye and heart prevails,
As when in Canterbury times
Sly Chaucer told his tales;

Till Ayr its flat, wide street begins
And midst his haunts we stand
Who made its humble brigs and inns
Like scenes in Holy land
And he who water turned to wine,
And lived not half his span,
Lies in the Scottish Palestine
The glorious Son of Man.

We drink his tankard full of ale
And toast him prodigal
As if it were the Holy Grail
Ourself Knight Parsafal
For that wherever life was sad
Or self-oppression ruled
He made the hovel-hearted glad
The dying firelog Yuled.

His spirit was the gale that blows
Across the Irish sea,
With independence to oppose
And voice of liberty,
The cattle feel it in their hair
It cools the ploughman's noon
And blooms the thistle and the tare
Along the banks of Doon.

Doon's crystal slide on pebbly floor
In many a stream we find
But not the poet peeping o'er
With his swift, minnowy mind:
The mind that poises, flashes, falls,
With instant instincts rife,
And prisoned in by river walls
Reflects and loses life.

They tire like Gods who would create,
They sublimate their hour,
Life's quickening to illustrate
Drains every vital power;
In zenith like the laboring bee
By beauty's regent charmed,
They from a moment's jubilee
Drop to the earth deformed.

Gorged on green leaves the silkworm weaves
His nature earthy, fine;
Beauty and health are poet's leaves,
He needs good meat and wine;
Grudge not his sweets who drink them up!
Thy nectar was his soul;
His Highland Mary one day's cup,
And Jean Armour his bowl.

His butts they were the stiff and smirk,
His sinners sham and cant,
He railed like Jesus at the Kirk
And flogged the Covenant;
John Knox so plied on faith his thong,
Burns went to Luther's school, —
Who loved not woman, wine and song
Was all his life a fool.

Wide as our British race his wand
To conjure formalism;
The young world charm from false despond
And flout the catechism;
Kirk Alloway's a ruin dull,
Its windows gaping niches,
Except when Tam o' Shanter's full
And sees it full of witches.

Great babe! who haled thy Scottish sect
And put its saints thy debtors,
And made thy wayside dialect
A language of belles lettres!
I do not kneel but bow thy due,
Ent'ring thy hut's low portal:
The unsevere see Nature through,
The joyous troll immortal.